UK - Tower 42, one of the tallest buildings in London, recently enlisted Light Fantastic Production Services (LFPS) to upgrade the control system powering its LED display. The top three floors of the distinctive skyscraper, visible from all sides of London, are lit up year-round with still images and animations representing charitable causes and topical dates in the calendar. These images are shown on a screen made up of 5,905 bespoke RGB pixels, which are programmed and maintained by the LFPS team. LFPS were enlisted in 2021 to carry out a complete overhaul of the control system which powers the display. Having been in situ for over 10 years in a hostile environment 40+ floors above London, it was beginning to suffer occasional failures. The building’s owners were keen to maintain the screen in great condition, in line with its status as a London landmark. The
USA - In October in the depths of the pandemic, a group of backers unveiled their plans for a new live entertainment centre “It’s time to put a positive spin out there, to have hope for concerts in St. Louis and for employment,” one of them told the press at the time. Less than one year later, their hope and vision were realised with the opening of The Factory, a bi-level 52,000sq.ft indoor venue with the capacity to serve up to 3,000 fans. Located in the heart of St. Louis’ popular dining and entertainment destination, The District, the new venue is now entertaining fans with a wide variety of shows, following strict safety protocols. Enhancing their experience is a dynamic and flexible lighting rig featuring Chauvet Professional Maverick, Rogue and STRIKE fixtures supplied by Logic Systems, which also installed audio, video, and rigging systems at The Factory
USA - Virginia’s famous Mariners’ Museum has upgraded its lighting control to a Strand Neo console from Signify. The Museum, situated in the city of Newport News, Virginia, holds one of North America’s largest maritime history collections and is designated America’s National Maritime Museum by the US Congress. It has a wide range of fixtures in place ranging from incandescent stage and theatre lights to LED indirect and accent lights. “One of the key areas within The Mariners’ Museum is our theatre performance space, and we use a lot of cues that sync with timecode to create dramatic lighting effects that help tell the stories we share,” explains Tim Kines, AV exhibit technician at the museum. “We needed to upgrade our control console to add dynamics and effects via a simple-to-use interface, and the Neo fits perfectly.” In the exhibition areas,
Poland - Founded in 1993, The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity was originally created as a one-off event to raise money for medical equipment, raising over $1.5m that year. Part of the WOŚP Foundation, the event has since grown to become Poland’s largest non-governmental, non-profit charity organisation, raising money for pediatric and elderly care and featuring annual Grand Finale live events in towns and cities right across the country. 2022 saw the 30th edition of the numerous events supporting the charity and their purpose this year was the purchase of medical and diagnostics equipment for eye diseases in children. The largest single event was held in the capital, Warsaw, where sound company Gigant Letus were commissioned to deliver, install, prepare and operate the sound systems for the various events and activities. Gigant supplied and commissioned four se
USA - When three-time Grammy Award-winning country duo Dan + Shay hit the road in March of 2020 for their first official headlining US arena tour, they played three consecutive sold-out shows. Then COVID struck, grinding the trek - along with everything else - to a sudden halt. A year and a half later, the tour finally picked back up, rescheduling and resuming the 30 remaining sold-out shows on the three-month run, which carried an L-Acoustics K Series loudspeaker system supplied by technical solutions provider PRG. Presented by AEG Presents, The Arena Tour was in support of the duo’s latest album, Good Things, with PRG supplying all audio, video, and lighting systems from its Nashville location. “This was our first tour with PRG, and as soon as I knew that they’d be our touring partner, I went to our production manager and said, ‘Hey, if we can have it, we’
South Africa - Having the right tools for the job is vital in any walk of life. When you are a radio presenter that means having the appropriate microphone. Prosound has helped GoldFM 104.3 to achieve this with an upgrade across all of its studios to Electro-Voice RE320 dynamic microphones. Based in Welkom, GoldFM is a community radio station providing music and speech-based programming to Free State’s second largest city, while also streaming to the world. “It’s very much nuts and bolts community broadcasting,” explains Brian Emmenis, station manager and head of technical at GoldFM. “We can do a lot more than the bigger radio stations because they’re subjected to very stringent national rules. What’s of interest here is not of interest elsewhere so we cover local news and can make a proper fuss of it, we can take it one step further.” “Brian has dec
USA - The Cincinnati Bearcats celebrated the end of a winning season with a 150-strong Verge Aero drone display, put on for the team by their sponsors and with fans invited to join the fun. Taking place at Cincinnati’s 38,000-seater open-air Nippert Stadium, which is the Bearcats’ home field, Verge Aero’s military-grade-manufactured drones were positioned high above the crowd to spell out the team’s 13-0 winning season and display their logo. Backing up the show were more than 100 lighting fixtures and 384 rooftop fireworks, creating a spectacular celebration show. Verge Aero’s Chris Lutts project managed the drones for the event, in collaboration with the University of Cincinnati Bearcats events team, their sponsor’s event team, and lighting and fireworks specialists. “We actually only had around seven days to get our drones programmed, transporte
UK - Audiologic has announced its collaboration with Technically Creative to deliver an immersive experience at Yorkshire Wildlife Park. The recently-launched Evolution restaurant at Yorkshire Wildlife Park provides an immersive experience, with diners embarking on a journey to a mysterious land where Jurassic Island meets the fantasy world of caves and mythical dragons, with sound, animatronics and visual effects. The restaurant forms part of the new ‘hub’ of retail and play, extending the park’s traditional offerings. To achieve this experience, the audio brief demanded speakers which had to be discrete enough that they could be disguised within the scenic works as much as possible, whilst producing enough volume at high quality to fill the space, with a relatively limited number of them. With multiple seating areas delivering different background soundscapes,
Japan - Robert Juliat continues its collaboration with Japan’s Zepp Hall network of concert venues via its exclusive Japanese distributor, Sogo Butai Co. The latest project, supplied and installed by Sogo Butai, was for the 2,900+ capacity Zepp Haneda in Tokyo and consists of a full complement of LED fixtures across the whole range of Robert Juliat’s LED portfolio: profile, single lens, followspots and cyclorama lights. Sogo Butai lighting designer Yukiteru Hayashi chose the comprehensive selection of LED fixtures to include 24 Dalis 860 cyclorama lights, six Tibo 533CW 115W Cool White and four ZEP 664SX2 300W profiles, 28 Warm White ZEP 360LF2 300W and 10 Cool White ZEP 360LF2 300W Fresnels, alongside 6 Oz 600W LED followspots. Four of the Oz followspots are sited in front-of-house positions and two in side positions. The profiles are rigged to a movable ba
UK - Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, and directed by Polly Findlay at London’s The Bridge Theatre last autumn, the European premiere of White Noise explored the subject of race in the 21st century from both a black and white perspective through a group of college friends. Working on an ambitious set design by Lizzie Clachan, lighting designer, Jackie Shemesh, chose six Ayrton Diablo LED profile fixtures to deliver some extremely precise lighting effects and ambient washes, and worked hard to sculpt the huge set despite some difficult rigging angles and ensure the skin tones of the diverse cast looked correct on stage. The 27m-deep set included a thrust stage, an overhead catwalk, a series of side wall flats arranged in perspective to frame the stage, and an angled ceiling flat which severely restricted hanging positions and lighting a
The Netherlands - The Harbour Club brand is known worldwide. The latest evolution in this successful concept is the just-completed The Harbour Club Theatre, a new 300-capacity purpose-built performance and event space located adjacent to The Harbour Club’s flagship restaurant Amsterdam Oost. It extends the opportunity of sampling exquisite food whilst enjoying top-notch entertainment, starting with the show Vegas, starring Dutch magician and illusionist Hans Klok, plus a cast of eight dancers, four singers, three acrobats and a live band. Lighting for this enew venue has been designed by Benny La Maitre, who put 24 Robe T1 Profiles, 28 LEDBeam 350s and six Spiider wash beam moving lights at the centre of the rig. This is part of an overall production design encompassing audio, video, staging, pyro and SFX, all planned and co-ordinated by The Harbour Club tec
USA - During the holiday season, Legacy Production Group of Minneapolis worked with Street Factory Media to present Nature Illuminated at the Minnesota Zoo, a magical driving or walking experience that featured displays of larger-than-life inflatable animals. Their second year working on the project, Legacy used a lighting package of Elation IP-rated luminaires to compose picturesque environments and controlled the lighting scenes using a large Obsidian lighting control network. The oversized animals - more than 30 specially crafted works of art illuminated from the inside with LED lights - were presented across five different zones on a nearly mile long loop, each zone with its own theme. Legacy’s Tom Gorman, lighting designer and production manager on the project, explains the role of the Elation lighting system. “We didn’t necessarily need to light the
USA - When Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall re-opened after a pandemic hiatus, those patrons attending the season debut of the resident Oregon Symphony were delighted to hear a striking difference in the sound of the orchestra. Following the installation of a Constellation acoustic system, they experienced for the first time a rich and balanced natural reverberance distributed evenly throughout the hall. On stage, the musicians could hear each other clearly despite disappearance of the massive and ungainly physical stage shell. The Rose City’s popular Italian Rococo Revival landmark had acquired a new and flexible acoustical signature. With a current seating capacity of 2,776, the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall is one of a quintet of venues operated by the appropriately stylised Portland’5 Centres for the Arts. It was built in 1928 as a vaudeville house, transit
UK - Burn The Floor is a fast-moving, high-intensity live dance show, which since its formation in 1997 (for Elton John’s birthday party) has performed in over 130 countries worldwide. Martin Audio partner dBS Solutions first provided sound system support for the 2019 UK tour (with a W8LM line array) but when producers Strictly Theatre Company re-engaged dBS for the 2022 tour, they upgraded to their latest acquisition - Wavefront Precision WPS optimised line array, with scalable resolution. dBS Solutions MD Chris Bogg says that having previously provided sound reinforcement for the Kevin & Karen tour, featuring Strictly dancers Kevin Clifton and Karen Hauer, this has become a genre in which they have found themselves specialising. “Burn The Floor is loud, high energy rock music, a combination of live band, vocalists and music to track,” he expla
South Korea - TechDataPS Co installed a Harman Professional Solutions audio system to create a lively and engaging space for visitors to the Paju City Civic Centre. Founded in 1994, the Centre is a public facility owned by the Paju City Facility Management Corporation, with five floors above ground and five basement floors. The public corporation utilises the centre to promote the arts, host sporting events and improve the quality of life for Paju residents. But the venue’s existing audio system presented major challenges, including inconsistent electrical work and a lack of output from the speaker amplifier, prompting organizers to commission a complete system overhaul. Additionally, the centre is an old building that isn’t structurally equipped to handle modern audio systems without additional support. After conducting a structural safety diagnosis, TechD
Europe - Deploying Riedel's Bolero wireless intercom system on its broadcast-camera motorcycles, Danish RF video specialist Krickhahn TV ensures seamless communications between the camera operator, driver, and production team during live coverage of cycling road races. Deployed on specially adapted motorcycles as a standalone system, the Bolero system allows the Krickhahn TV team to use a variety of headsets, and even helmets with a built-in Bluetooth headset, to maintain clear communications with high audio quality so they can bring viewers the best shots from the road. "When I was presented the idea of using Bolero for this application, I was immediately hooked - we had a proof of concept planned in just a few days where we made the configuration file and ran a test to make sure the whole system was stable over a whole day. We were very happy to verify the setup with
India - Naveen Deshpande, founder of Ground Control, is an award-winning lighting designer. He and his creative team are working on progressive and futuristic lighting design and audio-visual experiences for artists, festivals, corporates and other large-scale events across the globe. He speaks with admiration of the Showtec Sunstrip MKII blinders and uses 12 of them in one of India's biggest touring acts. The Showtec Sunstrip MKII blinders fitted well into the 2021 Prateek Kuhad India tour. Prateek is a noted singer-songwriter, creating independent music in Hindi and English. Last year he performed in places such as Bangalore and Pune, where the Showtec fixtures were used on stage. The tour was led by production company WMS Online and the lighting inventory suppliers were Star Dimensions India Pvt and J Davies Pro Sound and Lighting. Naveen Deshpande describes the Sho
UK - The joys of lighting pantomime are many. High on that list is the opportunity it affords a designer to unfurl a rainbow of colours and transform the stage into a playland that delights actors and audiences alike. Johanna Town, award-winning designer and chair of the ALPD, notes: “Panto is all about being bold with colour. It also has some big traditions of happy good fairy and wicked bad fairy, so it’s a lot of fun to reflect this in colour by doing things like making dramatic transitions, such as going from golden rich pinks, to menacing magentas and greens.” Town, who has worked at leading theatres throughout the world, got to spread her colour-rendering wings recently when she lit a panto production of Beauty and the Beast at Theatre Clwyd in Mold, Flintshire. Working with a collection of Chauvet Professional fixtures, she impishly mixed bold prim
Belgium - The high-profile Belgian Golden Shoe Awards, produced by DPG Media and Het Laatste Nieuws (HLN), is a prize given to the Belgian First Division A’s best male and female football players based on performance over the preceding year. Broadcast live on the national television channel VTM, this year for the first time, the lighting design was taken by Thomas Boets of LDP. Thomas made sure he scored plenty of aesthetic goals with the choice of lighting fixtures, which included 162 Robe moving lights installed at the Avenue venue, Antwerp Expo Centre, right in the heart of Belgian port city, where the 50 Robe T1 Profile, 60 LEDBeam 150s, 40 Pointes and 12 Spiiders were supplied together with other lighting kit plus all the audio and video production by rental company, Lust for Live. Thomas worked closely with creative director Steven Segers and producers S
UK - Located on the waterfront in the North Wales seaside resort of Rhyl, the 1031-seat Pavilion Theatre hosts touring theatre productions, comedy acts and music tours, alongside playing a key role at the heart of the community, staging local cultural events and school productions. When the theatre’s technical manager Andy Hughes was tasked with replacing the existing PA with a modern, versatile system capable of handling everything from a comedy gig to a rock & roll show, one brand came immediately to mind. “I had heard a lot of systems in the theatre over the years from touring shows, including many big-named brands and Nexo always really stood out sound wise.” Andy approached entertainment technology specialists A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET), where senior audio sales executive Steve Eaton turned to the Engineering Support Team at the Nexo Campus
Japan - Tempest has helped to produce an eye-catching projection mapping installation at Kumamoto Station. At Aso Caldera Hike near the busy station, visitors were able to walk through the representation of a circular caldera - a large volcanic crater - and experience a spectacular show of light and imagery in a relaxation spot in the city. A custom Tempest Cyclone outdoor projector enclosure installed high up on a nearby building balcony protects a Barco UDX-4K32 projector with a Dynamic Projection Institute Mirror Head, enabling mapping coverage of the entire caldera. The project was carried out S.C.Alliance, with technical direction from Bassdrum. S.C.Alliance has used Tempest outdoor enclosures successfully for several years in a variety of installations, and the Cyclone enclosure was supplied by Tempest’s Tokyo-based distributor TSJ. “At the ISE exhibition, we
Slovenia - A Dicentis conference system from Bosch played a key role to ensure a structured meeting and making the EU Western Balkans summit a successful event. Two Dicentis multimedia devices, 40 Dicentis discussion devices and 18 interpreter desks from Bosch were deployed at the summit, along with six Avonic CM73 and two CM20 cameras for split view plus other peripheral equipment. The in-person summit was held in October 2021 in Brdo pri Kranju. The leaders of the EU member states met in person with the six Western Balkans partners. Slovenia took over presidency of the Council of the European Union in July 2021 and hosted this get-together, marking the highlight of their presidency. Local AV solutions company and Bosch partner Robotrade, a member of the Congress Rental Network (CRN), was commissioned with the technical execution of the two-day summit. Though many co
USA - NBC Sports has selected Calrec to provide remote audio workflows for its production of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games from Beijing. The announcement was made by Karl Malone, director, sound design, NBC Sports and NBC Olympics, and Dave Letson, VP of sales, Calrec Audio. NBCUniversal is providing coverage of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games until 20 February, featuring a Winter Olympics-record 2,800+ hours of coverage across NBC, Peacock, USA Network, CNBC, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app. For the first time ever, NBC Sports is employing fully remote audio workflows for all its production of the Winter Games, with no audio consoles physically on-site at the event. NBC Sports will have four Calrec RP1 Remote Production cores in the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in Beijing to cover numerous studios. Full control for the IBC remote production cores will b
Austria - Earlier this year, Viennese BMS Production Group, a client of German Follow-Me partner LMP, was responsible for the technical production of the live ORF broadcast from holiday village Kirchleitn Kleinwild in St. Oswald. “Since we had already covered the stage situation with a Follow-Me 3D TWO system in summer 2021, we decided to integrate the entire site into the system in winter 2022,” explains Fritz Staudinger, managing director of BMS. “We installed the camera on the top floor of an adjacent building, protected from the weather, so that we could capture the entire area, including the open-air stage.” Director Fabienne Pinter made good use of the newly created 360° situation. In addition to the classic open-air stage, that the Follow-Me 3D system was originally based on, new viewing angles and performance areas were introduced throughout the locat
